Tag: animals

Blog Posts (16)

June 3, 2009

Just as swine flu is about to reach pandemic proportions according to the WHO, pigs are about to have their reputations saved by a recent discovery by Chinese researchers who say that cells from adult pigs have the ability to be coaxed into any type of cell in the body, just like embryonic stem cells.…

April 24, 2009

The Saint Louis Post Dispatch says that the sequencing of the cow genome is going to lead to more milk and better beef, but all I can say for sure is that it certainly is an interesting step forward in the world of genomics.…

February 9, 2009

Researchers have finally done it. Engineered a goat to save lives. On Friday, the FDA approved a genetically engineered goat that is able to produce in its milk (not for feta cheese making, mind you) a drug that will save the lives of patients born with a rare hereditary deficiency of antithrombin in their blood.…

January 29, 2009

Well, the Houston Chronicle did today in the article, “Should You Get Health Insurance For Your Dog?” The justification: “Dog owners can expect to pay a few hundred dollars a year for routine veterinary care, but a serious illness could send the bills soaring into the thousands.”

According to the article, fewer than 1% of pets are covered by health insurance in the US and of the 13 pet insurance plans available in the United States, not one of them will cover a pre-existing condition.…

November 26, 2008

Researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have reported that those giant trucks flying down the highway with chickens stacked many crates high are actually a hazard to our health.…

October 9, 2008

While lawmakers in Pennsylvania are cracking down on “puppy mills” and other unhealthy conditions for the care and raising of dogs in the Quaker State, it seems that these same legislators just couldn’t find it in them to forge a consensus about how to provide care for 20,000 or more uninsured Pennsylvanian people.…

May 22, 2008

You couldn’t make a story like this up. Lou Hawthorne, the guy who was previously involved with an operation called Genetic Savings and Clone (that’s him on the right with cloned dogs), teams up with Hwang Wook Suk — the central figure in one of modern science’s epic frauds — to auction off dog cloning services.…

News (8)

July 2, 2012 3:59 pm

Danny Klein, bassist for the J. Geils Band, paid $5 to an animal shelter for an abandoned 2-year-old German shepherd. Two years later, he paid about $3,000 for stem cell injections to treat the dog for severe arthritis. “Any expense is worth the expense when my dogs are involved. They’re like my children,” said Klein, 66, speaking from his Hyde Park home. His dog, Harlow, has come a long way since her previous owner tossed her out of a moving car. Banking on devoted pet owners such as Klein, entrepreneurs have built a flourishing market of veterinary treatments that include pet massage, acupuncture, and pricey stem cell treatments. Researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute have recently formed a company to break into the small but growing pet stem cell market.

July 2, 2012 3:16 pm

Welcome to the contradictory world that surrounds Peter Singer, the Australia-born moral philosopher who has been a professor of bioethics at Princeton University in New Jersey since 1999. Loved and loathed, one thing cannot be refuted: Singer, 65, has provoked debate about controversial issues such as infanticide, euthanasia, eugenics and animal rights.

May 29, 2012 10:44 am

As the number of species at risk of extinction soars, zoos are increasingly being called upon to rescue and sustain animals, and not just for marquee breeds like pandas and rhinos but also for all manner of mammals, frogs, birds and insects whose populations are suddenly crashing. To conserve animals effectively, however, zoo officials have concluded that they must winnow species in their care and devote more resources to a chosen few.

April 15, 2012 11:30 am

Scores of animal scientists employed by public universities have helped pharmaceutical companies persuade farmers and ranchers to use antibiotics, hormones, and drugs like Zilmax to make their cattle grow bigger ever faster. But at what cost?

April 9, 2012 9:42 pm

Is it ethical to spend $25,000 to save a pet? Multiple commentators weigh in on this debate. Our take: pets are loved and valuable parts of the family with whom we share special bonds. But it is not the best use of scarce health resources, for pets or humans, even when the likelihood of success is high.

April 9, 2012 1:09 pm

The Animal Medical Center in Manhattan, which performed 34 stent procedures on dogs and cats in 2005, usually to open up clogged passages in the bladder or kidney, created a clinic about two years ago to accommodate rising demand for minimally invasive surgery. Last year, it performed 630 stent procedures. Dr. Suter, at North Carolina State, has performed bone-marrow transplants on 65 dogs, with 10 more now on the waiting list. Many veterinarians offer hospice care, too, mapping out a treatment plan that lets a pet spend the remainder of its life at home, its pain eased through a program of palliative care.

March 26, 2012 1:34 pm

A federal judge ordered the Food and Drug Administration to restart a process that could limit the use of two types of antibiotics in cattle, pigs and poultry, amid concerns such use leads to antibiotic-resistant infections in humans.

March 18, 2012 3:33 pm

Professor Hwang Woo Suk from South Korea’s Sooam Biotech Research, once a national hero until his creation of human stem cells was found fake, signed on Tuesday a very ambitious deal with the North-Eastern Federal University of the Sakha Republic in Russia. Stem cell scientists are focusing on the extinct woolly mammoth.